2 Books Like The Paleoanthropology of Eastern Asia

Thanks to the brutal robbery of ancient tombs across the Philippines during the colonial era, vast quantities of their ancestral goldwork was torn from graves to be melted down and shipped to Spain, as indigenous art traditions and skills were stamped out and the descendants of these highly skilled people forced into poverty. This wonderful book, featuring pieces currently on display at the Ayala Museum in Manila, focuses on some scattered surviving remnants of this once-vibrant artistic tradition, mostly obtained from tombs on the southern island of Mindanao. A fascinating fusion of Indian, Southeast Asian, and Chinese techniques and artistic styles went into these truly beautiful pieces of goldwork, and this book also features delightful illustrations taken from the Boxer Codex to show how they would have been worn. It's a window into an otherwise lost tradition, and a tribute to the artists who once produced these extraordinary objects.

There are very few good books on the culture of the Iban people of Borneo, and so I was thrilled to get a copy of this 2005 classic! This is a deep dive into the culture of Borneo, and although it covers many aspects of Iban artistic expression, as the title suggests, this focuses particularly on the longstanding relationship between beautiful weavings and head-hunting. A highly skilled woman weaver would produce the finest textiles to demand a head from her spouse to show that he was worthy of staying married to her. This is an extraordinary anthropological study of an alien way of life, and is highly effective in demonstrating the intimate connection between weaving and killing people, with the women's lovely fabrics calling for heads with each seemingly-innocuous design motif.